(This is a monthly letter from Baba Colin Chee to members and friends of the Association.)
Dear Babas and Nyonyas
Peranakan Identity – Feedback
My letter on identity last month obviously resonated with many of you. We received almost 12,000 views on our Facebook page alone – four times more than the monthly average.
Discussions about identity seem like a newly-planted flag on top of a hill beckoning us.
Your wide-ranging responses tell us of the many concerns and observations you have about our culture and community. You may all have been thinking about, and mulling over, your own identity.
One member wrote: ”Enjoyed your excellent letter! I’ve had all those questions bruising my head over the years!”
Taking Pride
Thank you all, for writing in and sharing your thoughts.
I shall always treasure one response from a lovely Bibik “at the ripe old age of 80”: “Thank you for keeping our Peranakan Culture alive. Now I appreciate, more than I have ever done before, my Peranakan culture. And it is all thanks to your occasional letter, such as this one, that reminds me ‘where I come from’ and makes me proud to say I am Peranakan.”
Kamsiah, Bibik. Your pride in being Peranakan deeply touched your General Committee members, too.
All your comments help to inform us that our efforts have not been in vain – to build greater awareness of our embracive hybrid culture and to take pride as Peranakans contributing to a larger society – Singapore.
Another surprise response from the other side of the ocean: “I love reading about my heritage. I am in the United Kingdom and my mother is from Singapore. She came to the UK in the 1960s. So I am a mixture but proud to be of Peranakan descent.”
Yet another from Australia: “Intrigued, inspired and heartened by the message. Pity my father is not around to read it and feel proud about being Peranakan.”
One more from Singapore: “Thank you again for allowing me this opportunity to share my thoughts and feelings on Am I Peranakan? To that I say a resounding “Yes”.
Being proud of one’s identity, without being arrogant, will ensure our culture’s sustainability.
It does not mean sticking to the glory of our past. It means having the self-confidence to move forward knowing our culture can be kept alive when we make it relevant to our times, and to us, by contemporising it.
Inclusiveness
One other big message pealed clear as a bell in most of the responses: “Inclusiveness is exactly the right approach to take.”
“Your perspective is a testament to the spirit of our forefathers – inclusive, tolerant, embracing and with lots of wit and humour!”
“Agree that we must take an open and inclusive approach, like our forefathers before us.”
Yet, in all this mix, there are a few others who wrote about the traditional view of Peranakan identity, which is not wrong either, such as: “If I may add my two cents worth…ancestry and heritage together define a true, blue Peranakan.”
And another: “My siblings and I have never considered ourselves as Peranakan Chelop. We grew up in a household of Peranakan values and food, even mythical stories relating to the culture. My mum and dad spoke Baba patois at home, even though they were both English educated, and even to us, their children. Conversations would sometimes be a mixture of English and Baba Malay.”
Self-Identity
Some feel that self-identity, tempered with community acceptance, is sufficient to define one’s identity.
In other words, one’s identity is really what one thinks it is. No need to look at ancestry (genealogy) or other cultural markers like being able to speak Baba Malay, religion or wear sarong kebaya, or eat nyonya food, etc.
In anthropology, self-identity has become an increasingly important aspect of study. Often it is linked to acculturation, or assimilation to a different, often dominant, culture.
Hence the association’s ethnocultural approach to identity.
One viewpoint: “To the list of people who are in self-doubt, I would think that if they wish to be Peranakans they can be, and if they don’t feel any affinity to the culture they should refuse to consider themselves Peranakans.”
The association does feel, however, that many Peranakans tend to return to their roots over time in their search for identity.
Special Census
One member wrote that culture is the key to identity: “Peranakanism is not a matter of DNA but of cultural practice, adopted or created or handed down, inclination and perhaps of family tradition, voluntary or by force of family tradition to conform.”
I would have sorely liked to share many more similar thoughtful commentaries but for lack of space.
However, we will certainly take all of them into consideration as the association attempts, for the very first time, to undertake a digital census of the Peranakan community in Singapore and perhaps in the region in the months to come.
It will be an interesting challenge but one that will help us answer a key question: How large is the Peranakan Chinese community in Singapore (and perhaps even elsewhere, given the reach of the internet)?
So as not to waste this opportunity, we will also try to draw a cross-sectional profile of Peranakan community as a whole in this census, without turning the digital survey into something burdensome.
The Peranakan Association Singapore will take up this discussion of the census when we are ready to launch it.
Conclusion
Before I conclude this month’s letter, I would like to thank Baba Fred Lam for thoughtfully and quietly pointing out to me the following: “The Peranakans were Queen’s Chinese in the 1800’s (1837-1901) before they became King’s Chinese after 1901 when King Edward the 7th succeeded his mother Queen Victoria.”
I might now add – and then again after Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953.
Baba Fred had established his finding in the book, The Peranakans of Malacca, by Baba Bonny Wee.
I managed to corroborate the same facts about the Queen’s and King’s Chinese in a superb book that started as a research paper by anthropologist Dr Jurgen Rudolph titled Reconstructing Identities. A social history of the Babas in Singapore.
The out-of-print 1998 published book was recently loaned to me by Baba Thomas Tan and makes for truly fascinating reading. I am not done with it yet. Kamsiah, Baba Thomas.
With Chinese New Year just less than two weeks away, Nyonya Linda and I would like to wish each one of you Selamat Taon Bahru! A Happy and Healthy Chinese New Year! and to your loved ones as well!
Colin Chee
Keeping the Culture Alive
30 January 2021
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